2008-06-15

green flowers

i was completely captivated by the mass of green-petalled guelda roses when i came across them in jane packer’s small flower shop, which provided me work experience through southwark college in london. i did floristry there, just like jane did. that was some two decades ago and it was my “flower london era” when flowers had been my passion and obsession. i do miss florist’s work room saturated with foliages carrying on photosynthesis and the air being rather oppressive with the sweet odour of blooms. i simply, maybe too easily, gave up my girlie dream as well as the chance of a lifetime given by jane who trained me. flowers, especially green ones, are still the things that make me happy no end, though.*meanwhile, we japanese are having the wet, muggy, gloomy rainy season that dampens our spirits a bit at the moment. it usually lasts one and a half months while the monsoon in south asia last much longer. so we can’t complain. far from it, we can be enthralled with this season of hydrangeas in flower. the stunning blue, pink, mauve and snow white globes are in competition with each other everywhere. and my eyes would be spotting a pale green globe, naturally.*i no longer do flowers, arranging or wiring. instead, i look after pot plants with relish in my balcony. most of my babies: parsley, (no sage,) rosemary, thyme, marjoram, peppermint, basil, aojiso (japanese perilla) and geranium are edible. which is good. gazing at their flowers that never stand out, i find them subtle beauties and think this must be a perfect life of peace as there have been too many catastrophes on this planet recently. cyclones, earthquakes, tornados and floods, each of them tears my heart out. so much so that i appreciate my minuscule green parsley flowers a great deal during a spell of nice weather. the thing is, all my babies have overgrown since april. i’d need to get them bigger terracotta pots again when the rainy season is over.